Integrating Technology in ESL Writing

Tuesday, 11/12/2012
TE10503 Teaching Writing Skills


Write an article on the topic integrating technology in teaching writing. It can be anything related to the slides, own opinion, how you would use it in future.

It might be difficult for teachers to keep up and adapt to the advancements of the technology in the world that we’re living today. In this century, everything around us revolves the usage of technology. It helps in further the information as quick as possible compared to the olden days. The field of education is not excluded. The advancement of technology has brought numerals of improvement in education. The advancements that technology contributed in today’s way of learning has made it become vital to all of us. Technology, in the sense of learning has helped teachers to expand their ability from the linear, text-based learning to various kinds of other ways that helped to engage the students’ interest and understandings. However, there are several of other ways that educators can do in order to implement the usage of technology in their classroom, especially in teaching writing.

One of the advancement that technology offers in teaching is by using the online based word-document such as The Google Docs. Of the many digital tools that many tech-savvy teachers used, Google Docs has been one of the most brilliant invention. The fact that it stores documents on the Web makes it accessible from anywhere. It allows its users to share their work with others, which make writing even more interesting. This brilliant tool has created a space where collaborative works becomes easier and smooth, which also reduced the difficulty to gather everybody all at once. It is time consuming, and sometimes the discussions carried out were not even productive. This enhancement has also contributed in bridging and connecting the students and teacher. For instance, if the student managed to do their homework online, the teacher just has to log in and check their students’ work, as easy and quick as that. The auto-save feature in Google Docs allows the users to save the docs without even clicking the ‘save’ button as many people tend to be in a rush and forgotten to do so.

The usage of interactive whiteboard has also broaden the learning process. It has increasingly replaced the features of a traditional classroom blackboard or ordinary whiteboard to an electronic one. Interactive whiteboards display large visual panels that can be used as a traditional whiteboard, but it expends the ability of a traditional whiteboard by adding the features such as image projector, or interactive computer projector. Interactive whiteboards are designed for classroom use, and apparently it has engaging with the students and the current learning process. This innovative teaching tools allows the teachers to enhance any presentation or lesson by easily integrating video, animation, graphics, text and audio with the spoken presentation. It is believed that students may respond better seeing information presented visually.

As for my opinion, there are a lot more improvement that technology has contributed in learning process. It works both way between the students and teacher, and it allows interaction widely and beyond the traditional ways of how learning process was. These interactions assigned by the recent inventions are usually the real-time response by both of the students and teachers, so the learning process becomes a lot easier and smooth.

Mini Test Question 2: 'Environment'

Wednesday, 5/12/2012
TE10503 Teaching Writing Skills
Tutorial 6 (b)

Question: You are teaching the theme 'Environments' to a form three class with intermediate level of proficiency. Describe one activity on how to integrate the following thinking skills into your lesson.

A) Analysis
B) Application

Answer: 

A) Analysis
Firstly, teacher divides the students into groups of 4-5. Next, the teacher will ask them to examine what pollution is currently running on their surrounding. Each group might get different or similar types of pollution. Then, they will proceed by listing down the causes of the pollution. In order to do so, they have to relate to their own experience, based on what they saw or heard, or came across to in their daily lives.

B) Application
Break the students into groups of 4-5 as previous. Next, the teacher provides different types of pollution to each group respectively (air, water, land and sound pollution). Teacher distributes a paper listing the causes of each pollution, (it could be the one that they prepared during the analysis thinking skill previously) Later, teacher asks them to solve the causes. For example, land pollution occurs due to the waste dumping in the landfill area in the neighborhood. So they have to discuss in the group in what way can this problem be solved. 

Mini Test Question 1: MAP

Wednesday, 5/12/2012
TE10503 Teaching Writing Skills
Tutorial 6 (a)

We were asked to write instructions for 2 writing activities based on the picture given below.

1. Your friend, Steven has just arrived to Kota Kinabalu for his holiday. He will be in Kota Kinabalu for three days. By referring to the picture, construct a full day tentative that he can use as a tour plan while he is here.

2. Steven who has just arrived from Australia is staying at the Hyatt Regency Kinabalu Hotel. By referring to the map, provide him a direction to the Sabah Tourism Promotion Corporation using at least 10 suitable prepositions.

Assessing Students' Writing

Tuesday, 4/12/2012
TE10503 Teaching Writing Skills


Last week, we were taught to assess the students' writing. How do we do that? In what way can we assess the papers without demotivating them? Should we praise them or should we follow the marking guideline strictly? Is there any right or wrong way to assess the papers?

These are some of the questions that we, as the future teachers would ask to others and even to ourselves the first time we were being exposed to this. So in order to guide us in assessing and responding, Ms. Yoon has distributed a marking scheme that has been adapted from the MUET scoring scheme for writing.

*You may click the picture to enlarge*

Next we were separated into a few groups. My group had to respond and assess the paper that I've posted in my previous post. It's quite challenging because the student seems to have a lot to say, and it shows that he  or she knows how and when to use a certain vocabulary. However this student seems to have a problem in arranging the words in a sentence and the writing is lacking in the usage of connectors. So based on the marking scheme and on our personal motive as well that we were agreed to not let this student fails, so we gave him 10 out of 20 :)

Responding to Students' Writing

Tuesday, 4/12/2012

TE10503 Teaching Writing Skills

Hello everyone! This time our lecturer, Ms Yoon has distributed some of her students paper so that we are able to see how is a lower-proficiency student did their writing. We've learned to respond to students' writing in many ways, she also gave us the guideline, or the basic principle before and during the respond. Basically there are three ways to respond to students' writing that we can do, referring to Ms. Yoon's guide and they are:

1. Written comment

2. Talk about the paper

3. Checklist 

Personally, I think it would be the best to talk about the paper. For instance, I will call the students probably during their recess time, or before they go back home. Of course, I will also take responsibility in taking care of my students. For example if it's recess time I will provide them a meal. Or if it's after the school hours, I will personally bring that student to their home after the talk. What I am trying to do is not actually impossible. I know that some people who came across this post might think that, by using this way some students might take the help for granted, but of course, as a teacher you will know your students best. If this student is not improving, there shall be a different reminder. If this student is just pretending to be very weak just to draw attention and get free home-made meal, you'll spot that. I believe that when I be a teacher, I will be able to recognize my students' behaviors and levels. I also believe that there is nothing wrong to get closer with your students in that kind of way because they will appreciate that and somehow it will motivate them to do better. Different students have different perceptions but as a teacher you must be able to identify which is which and how to manage it well. 

Anyway, this is the example of a student's writing. I will tell you how would I assess this paper in my next post. See you! :)

*You may click the picture to enlarge*

Educational Games: fun and meaningful all at once!

Do you have any idea what educational games are? Have you ever tried to play any educational games before? Educational games are the games that are enjoyable to play but at the same time, it is purposeful. While playing the game, we will reach certain objectives that are meaningful to gain and are useful in our daily lives. Our lecturer, Ms. Yoon Sook Jhee has encouraged us to play these kind of games and find some ways that we can integrate these games in our lessons, specifically in writing.

Haiti Catastrophe (introduced by Ms. Yoon)
This game lets its' players to choose which role they would like to play as. Next, the players will determine the best choice that they can work on in order to help the victims. The choices must be relevant and brilliant. There is no right or wrong choice but of course there is better choice or the worse ones. So basically it'll educate the players to choose wisely and sort of imagine how it is like, to be in that role's shoes. Overall it's a great game.

*click on pictures to enlarge*

So these are some of the snapshots of the game, it basically educate its players in playing a role wisely. 

Some of the writing activities that we can come up with:

1. Ask students to write on their experience about the roles that they played.

2. Ask students to choose the roles and write a passage on the responsibilities carried as the role chosen.

3. Teacher creates more roles, and ask them to write what would that role do in order to accomplish a certain task. 

There are some other sites all over the Internet that are intended for educational purposes. Nobel prize, for instance also provided some educational games for everyone, including some other subjects offered in schools. 

URL: http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/all_productions.html

Although most of the subjects that Nobel stresses on are Sciences subjects, English teachers may do a little bit of an adjustment to teach writing. 

Higher Order Thinking Skills - Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

Hello there everybody! Ever heard of the Bloom's Taxonomy? The word "taxonomy" simply means "classification". Meaning to say that Bloom Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives to classify forms and levels of learning.. Let's take a closer look about it :)

On the left side is the original version of Bloom's Taxonomy by Benjamin Samuel Bloom and his colleagues  in 1956. However, in 2001, Anderson and Krathwohl had revised the cognitive taxonomy. And it has been used up until today. So I hope that explains why is this thinking skill is called as the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy :) Four out of six of the thinking skills: Synthesizing, Evaluating, Analyzing and Applying are being considered as the Higher Order Thinking Skills. 

Wednesday, 14/11/2012
TE10503 Teaching Writing Skills
Tutorial 5

Choose one of the four levels. Refer to the themes in KBSM. Design a task which integrates the level chosen. Write meaningful instructions for your task.

Theme	Social Issues
Topic	Drug Addiction Is A Disease. What Do We Do About It?
Level	Analysis / Evaluation
Learning Outcomes	By the end of these activities, the students will:           · understand that addiction is a chronic disease and that is likely to recur;            · recognize that treatment is most effective when it combines medication and   behavioral treatments;            · be able to explain how treatment for addiction is similar to that for other  chronic diseases, such as diabetes or heart disease.
Activity	Teacher’s activity	Student’s activity
	Teacher asks students about the success rate for treatment on drug addiction compared to other chronic diseases.	Students make predictions about the success rate for treatment of addiction compared with treatment for other chronic diseases.
	Teacher asks whether there were cases where drug addiction and its chronic disease are differ or similar to other chronic diseases using WH questions:           · What are the differences and similarities?           · Why do they differ?           · How can treatment be effective?	Students evaluate case studies of different individuals with drug-addiction background and other chronic diseases based on readings and experiences in order to answer the questions.

With this kind of activity, students will evaluate on the questions given to them and it is good as it practices the students to judge (evaluate) as they will compare and contrast. :)